Religion is always a contentious topic ’round these parts, but I found the discussion of ultra-orthodox Judaism in this thread very interesting, so I thought I might do another free-wheeling religious thread so we can all scream at each other about how we’re all ignorant bigots (though mostly that only happens when it’s Catholicism we’re discussing).
By chance, I’ve had a few long discussions with Hindu friends of mine recently, one a practicing believer, the other a cultural Hindu who has read a lot about religions but doesn’t believe or practice (beyond the annual excruciating Diwali festivities). One explained to me why people in India could build palaces next to ghettos and not have the plebes come and kill them and steal all their shit, because violent acts give you bad karma. The other told me that he thought the big difference between Hinduism/Budhism and western religions is that in western religion, you can repent and not have to pay for your crimes, whereas in eastern religions, you’d get my name’s Krish, and you ain’t talking your way out of this shit. And then I read in a Times article about Tibetan dumplings (it was annoying, so I’m not going to link) that Tibetans liked red meat because the karmic load of killing a single large yak was not as bad as killing a bunch of smaller, say, chickens.
Is that accurate, that the idea that you’ll have to pay via reincarnation for everything you do wrong — no excuses — is something that makes eastern religions fundamentally different from western ones?
Evolving Deep Southerner
Hell is the biggest lie that’s ever been told. Reincarnation is the second-biggest.
Citizen Alan
So in other words, Hinduism is like every other religion in the history of the world: a mechanism for social control specifically designed to subjugate the lower classes by making them fear supernatural consequences for defying authority and convention. Good to know.
Raven
@Citizen Alan: Ding, we have a winner in aisle #2!
Cassidy
@Evolving Deep Southerner: I thought it was Keyzer Soze?
protected static
It’s a gross oversimplification. You can ‘buy’ your way out of sin – or at least mitigate its effects through other acts such as pilgrimage, charity, prayer, sacrifice, what have you – in pretty much every religion.
It’s also a mistake to talk in terms of Eastern vs Western religion – there are many sects of Buddhism, for instance, with very different beliefs and rituals. It’s like talking about the Catholic Church of Rome and a single-church of snake-handlers as the same entity…
Professor
Religion (all) is the Greatest Scam visited on humankind. Pure and simple!
Gex
The entire afterlife thing is a problem for me. It is a really good way to motivate people to do horrible things in the here in now for the promise of something that very likely does not exist.
It’s almost interesting. Any study of economics will show we have a strong preference for the present, and here it is the opposite. Almost like religion twists people up.
Amir Khalid
Not really, I would think. Either way you still get judged for what you do in this life, and then receive some commensurate punishment/reward.
That curious belief among some Christians that belief alone is sufficient for eternal salvation, regardless of devout observance and good works, is hardly universal within Christianity itself. As far as I’m aware there’s nothing like it in the other Abrahamic faiths.
Polish the Guillotines
@Citizen Alan: With the special bonus gift that your present-day condition of poverty is the price you’re paying for misdeeds in the previous life, so take it and like it, losers.
Johnny Coelacanth
I’m sure I don’t know. I prefer the Zen-flavored Buddhisms which deprecate reincarnation, karma scores and spirits.
Trentrunner
Just remember that all the tortured, windy discussions of competing religions’ abstruse points about divinity, reincarnation, transubstantiation, immanence, eternity, # of angels dancing on the head of a pin, and all the rest…
All of it is unproven horseshit. All of it. For actual applicability to the real world, we might as well discuss whether Frodo or Sam is true hero of LOTR.
vikram
The two main differences between the eastern (Hinduism,Buddhism etc) vs the Semitic religions is –
a. The concept of heresy. There is no sanctioned concept of heresy against the orthodox for Hindus or Buddhists unlike that for the Christians/Jews/Muslims.
b. The concept of Karma – that you pay for your actions ( they have consequences) in this birth and the next. This is probably the best way to explain why bad things happen to decent people. It’s their karma….
So @Dougj – you are mostly correct when you say that you have to pay. Its just that this probably happens in your next life when your soul gets reincarnated…
Of course, this isn’t a license for you to go completely nuts in this life…:), though try telling that to the wingnut crowd here in the States…
c u n d gulag
At their core, most of today’s organized religions are an answer to the earlier, woman-dominated, “Mother Earth.” Where you had an Earth Goddess, and lesser “Gods” and Goddesses.”
They’re not just about control and subjugation of the lesser people, they were also a direct attack on women’s roles in society.
In hunter-gatherer societies, the women kept the “home,” raised the kids, took care of the family, cooked, and made a lot of the tools. And they ran everything day-to-day as the men went off to hunt. And since they and the children did most, if not ALL of the gathering – they were over 50% of the “economy.”
When we adapted nature and adopted animals in agricultural societies, we switched to one God (mostly, the Sun), until later on.
Women’s roles changed.
Children, specifically young males, could help in farming, where they were useless in a hunt.
Religion changed to accomodate societal changes.
And, so, here we are today, with almost all religions centered around a male God.
This is today’s episode of “Societal Changes By An Admitted Agnostic and Idiot – In Only A Few Minutes.”
schrodinger's cat
Religion is a an elaborate ruse, devised by powerful men, to keep women in their place. Hinduism is no exception to this rule.
According to traditional Hinduism (the way it is practiced, not the lofty Vedic texts, and such)
A son is better than a daughter, a woman whose husband is dead is to be shunned, and is considered inauspicious. I could go on.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
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So basically it works the same way Christianity and hope does in keeping Americans from lining the top .1% up against their mansion gates and gunning them down — just substitute heaven, hell, and lotteries for karma.
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Citizen Alan
@Evolving Deep Southerner:
Heaven is a more pernicious lie than Hell. Heaven teaches believers to tolerate injustice in this world in exchange for a mythical afterlife of peace and contentment. OTOH, I don’t think I could face living in this world if I didn’t believe that all the monsters who have made it into such a shitty place and who will die peacefully in their beds won’t face some kind of punishment in the afterlife. Indeed, my rejection of Christianity was triggered initially by the suggestion that absolute monsters can escape universal judgment just by saying the right magic words before they die. We don’t know the exact circumstances of Hitler’s death, but if he confessed his sins and “accepted Jesus into his heart” before doing so, then the precepts of modern Christianity indicate that he’s dwelling in the bosom of Abraham. We do know that people such as Gandhi, Carl Sagan, Leonard Bernstein, Albert Einstein, Malcolm X, Aldous Huxley, and far too many others did not make a profession of faith and are therefore condemned to be tormented for a length of time infinitely longer than the universe has thus far existed. You know, because God is just and all that.
Q.Q. Moar
I’m sure Doug appreciates all the lessons on what religion is all about and what it’s really for, but he asked a question on a much finer point: is there absolution for “sin” in Eastern religions? If I understand it correctly; not technically, no. Howevah, you CAN have so much accrued good karma, or ‘merit’ that a karmically negative act will be effectively neutralized by all the good things you’ve done prior to that act. But it’s probably still a good idea to donate a little extra to the temple or give the begging monks a little more food.
JPL
Doug as much fun as it is bashing religions, WaterGirl had an important request on the previous thread.
It’s the last day of this fundraising quarter. How about putting up links for Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren and the Scott Walker recall?…………………………………
Pretty please.
Constance
As I understand karma it’s not necessarily about the past life or the coming life. Reincarnation is a belief and Buddha was pretty adamant about not relying on belief but rather on observing your own experience through the senses. And, I’m not an authority. Buddha also supposedly said not to try to understand karma because either your head would explode or you would go insane.
My personal understanding of karma is that every action has a consequence, possibly good, possibly bad, and further, we might never know all the consequences. The woman killed when I run a red light might have children who go on to live lives none of us will ever know about that are affected by my running the red light. In my lifetime the consequences could be a long jail term if I’m poor or a person of color, or community service if I’m from an important family, have lots of political pull, am filthy rich or everybody on the jury hates red lights (well, that would probably disqualify them).
If I go to jail my house is foreclosed upon, my cats are homeless, my heirs are left penniless and psychologically scarred–it goes on and on.
Another aspect of karma is intention. Did I intend to run the red light knowing I would or could hurt someone or did I temporarily black out because of a brain tumor? In either even I’m technically responsible, but what was my intent? I think this is where we get to the exploding head part.
I’m an atheist so I choose to run with the consequences understanding of karma. Who the hell knows if it’s correct? Works for me.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@schrodinger’s cat:
Off topic, but you’re the only one I feel I can ask about this (now that Valdivia’s never here)…how strict is the no-linen-before-memorial-day rule? I just got a nice linen blazer from Uniqlo and I’d like to wear it if it gets warm in a couple weeks (as it might).
JGabriel
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DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
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Not schrodinger’s cat, but can’t you just move the Memorial Day deadline to May Day, Easter, or April Fool’s Day — because global warming?
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protected static
@vikram: What’s interesting to me is the emergence of ‘heresy’ of sorts in India with the rise of Hindu nationalism, where some of the more extreme supporters of the BJP have approved narratives about Hindu traditions. For instance, modern yoga is far more a product of German devotees in the 1920s resurrecting it than anything that may or may not have been practiced traditionally. Members of the BJP have tried to sue writers who’ve written about this European role in reviving (and consequently altering) dying Hindu practices.
It’s more about cultural purity and/or superiority than what Christians would call heresy – but it tugs many of the same strings.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@JPL:
Can you find me the links?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@JPL:
I think I can find them all except the Wisconsin recall.
Loneoak
The problem with religion is that every sentence you start with the phrase ‘the problem with religion is’ will be so incomplete that it will be functionally false.
ruemara
I’ve often wondered if I’m paying for some crimes in a past life. Some days, I’m pretty sure if I wasn’t Hitler, I was probably some other high level evil. Maybe the guy who resurrected the zombies in castle Wolfenstein. If I’m not paying for something in a past life, then I’m not quite sure what Deity is in charge, because it often doesn’t seem to be benevolent. I dislike the karma thing because I have not yet seen the cruel, the violent, the greedy or the petty truly receive any karmic payback for what they do. Jim Henson is dead from flu; Dick Cheney has gotten a heart replacement. 1 man who did nothing but educate and charm children the world over is cut down in his 40’s, the other directly caused the slaughter of thousands, robbed a country for his own profit, brought torture to the mainstream to the point that his party celebrates it and shot his friend in the face with birdshot and made him apologize. I won’t even delve into my issues with slums, child abuse, the poverty and cruelty I find all too common in India (I gave up on Death of Vishnu because I could not handle the cruelty). Karma over the death of a cow is hard to handle, but mistreating little kids, hording wealth and watching the poor live in filth is ok. Alrighty then, Brahmins.
Omnes Omnibus
@Loneoak: I see what you did there.
Warren Terra
@Amir Khalid:
As an Atheist Jew, one thing I’ve always liked about Judaism is that belief in God is not an especially important part of it, and though the Orthodox believe there are hundreds of benchmarks for being a good Jew (including belief in God; first commandment and all that), they believe essentially all of those are irrelevant to being a good person.
AdamK
Different horses, same old horseshit.
JPL
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: Balloon Juice has an act blue site but I already donated directly. I would give more to warren though.
https://secure.actblue.com/page/dcccdscc
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/bjforwarren?refcode=thermometer
Brachiator
No.
Buddhism and Hinduism have many flavors. And then there’s Shinto, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, etc. Trying to understand the Jain approach to karma makes your head hurt, even without looking for East v West contrasts.
wrb
I came across this earlier today, which pretty much sums up what I believe,
which could also be called transcendentalism.
Diana
@Raven: thanks, that was hilarious…
Diana
@JPL: speaking of Karma…
miyagi
Karma as a doctrine is not dependent on reincarnation. Zen Buddhists, for instance (I am a Soto Zen monk trained in Japan), typically not only reject the notion of reincarnation but would reject the notion that there is any sort of “self” or “soul” or whatever that could be reincarnated (or, for that matter, incarnated in the first place). But karma, now, that’s a bitch. The karmic wheel keeps on turning. Cause and effect can’t be wished away.
Winston Smith
Doug’s Hindu friend is essentially correct about karma versus salvation. Both theories lead to some unfortunate extremes, however. In the case of karma, it suggests that one is born into the conditions they deserve. Hence you have the caste system in which there is no social mobility.
In the Judeo-Christian model, we are all born the same and have the same options for salvation. If you follow the Calvanist model, we are all born scum and must redeem ourselves (which actually doesn’t work because it’s all predetermined anyway). In most other veiwpoints, we are all born innocent and must repent for the mistakes we make along the way. I think the existence of Calvinism and its bastard children is a testament to our capacity for self-loathing and not really a reflection of anything in the universe divine or otherwise.
Judaism, being a tribal religion had a much better understanding of the difference between crimes that were important spiritually and crimes that were just crimes. Christianity, which started as a religion that never aspired to legal authority was less specific.
Another point overlooked by fundamentalists is that repentance only works if you really mean it. This can be reflected in your actions (doing good things and not repeating mistakes), but ultimately it’s in your heart. The glassy-eyed white people in your megachurch may believe you when you said you “didn’t mean nothin'” by calling President Obama the n-word, but God knows.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@c u n d gulag:
Sorry, but it doesn’t make sense that hunter-gatherer societies would primarily worship fertility/mother goddesses: They often lived in times not-of-plenty, when extra mouths meant extra death. Add to that the fact that young children burdened the tribe when attacked by predators…
It makes more sense that the mother goddess is a function of a sedentary agricultural society, in which men play a larger part in food production, while women are expected to do their part in bearing as many children as they possibly can in order to increase the society’s population to the point where that society can overwhelm its neighbors via sheer numerical weight.
Chris
Funny this should come right after DougJ’s post. Can these Supreme Court Justices ever regain their lost respectability/karma?
Diana
@protected static: “For instance, modern yoga is far more a product of German devotees in the 1920s resurrecting it than anything that may or may not have been practiced traditionally. Members of the BJP have tried to sue writers who’ve written about this European role in reviving (and consequently altering) dying Hindu practices.”
They’re going to have more fun with the yogis, then, because as far as I know Hinduism has one extraordinary characteristic among religions: converts don’t get assigned a caste. This means it’s better to be a convert than to be born into the faith. At least I’ve seen converts pick and choose their Hindu gods and their Hindu rituals, something you can’t do if you’re born into the system.
Sly
@Evolving Deep Southerner:
@Citizen Alan:
Both wrong.
Number one with a bullet: That such a thing as a soul exists. Every perversion of basic moral intuitions follows from that lie, regardless of the theological system that is built upon it.
wrb
In his introduction to the recent translation of the complete Tibetian Book of the Dead the Dali Lama sets forth a picture reincarnation that isn’t completely incompatible with scientific thinking. What goes on, your fragment of mind, is stripped of virtually everything that you think of as you, ephemeral.
There is nothing out there to forgive you.
You are the life you’ve lived.
I’ve long thought Dante can be read this way, strangely. His torments consist of enduring being the person you truly are, filters completely down, for eternity.
Winston Smith
I find this aspect of the Internet fascinating:
DougJ:
Half of the responses:
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: If it is warm enough (70 or above), go right ahead and wear it. I am going to wear my pretty white skirt when it gets that warm.
Speaking of sartorial matters, I have found a wonderful tailor. She replaced the zipper of my favorite jeans, they look new and mended my long black skirt, so now its knee-length and flirty instead of ankle-length and Amish.
LongHairedWeirdo
I’ve heard it said that the idea that you get punished for wrongdoing is a bad interpretation of karma, and heard a description that put me in mind of rowing a boat… thinking that your actions won’t affect you is like thinking you can row any way you want, but still have the boat move the way you desire.
But I’m not expert enough to have a meaningful opinion… I just liked the idea because it fits with my philosophy that whatever you do *does* affect the world around you, and therefore affects *you*.
YoohooCthulhu
It’s stupid to conflate Hinduism and Buddhism because even though they have the same words (Dharma, Karma, Samsara, Moksha) those words mean pretty much completely different things in each religion.
Namely, the view of Karma Doug is describing is really more the Hindu view, where negative karma is enforced upon negative acts by a supreme being. The Buddhist notion of karma is less black and white, because there’s no being imposing karma on you, you’re largely doing it to yourself and it affects your own path toward enlightenment, and some degree of negative karma is considered unavoidable and a lot of moral decisions focus on minimizing karma. So there’s more of an individual responsibility component, rather than a “someone else making you pay” component. The results are largely similar, however, because they DO promote a different view of individual responsibility.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@schrodinger’s cat:
I also found a very good tailor recently. Unbeknownst to me Rochester is a hot bed of good quality tailors because Hickey Freeman is a large local employer. This apparently also accounts for why we have a large Turkish population (many Turkish tailors).
ColleenMary
I find religion and religions fascinating–although too often wildly depressing. Still–trying to understand the great variety of human attempts to come to grips with “ultimate reality” is pretty amazing. For anyone who’s interested in a terrific overview of the variety of ways religions function, I recommend John Haught’s What is Religion? He discusses (among other things) several different WAYS of religion (sacramentalism, mysticism, silence, and action) and several different AIMS of religion (reassurance, mystery, adventure, and morality). He’s also got a book entitled What Is God, in which he discusses the idea of the divine in terms of depth, freedom, beauty, truth, and mystery. Haught taught at Georgetown forever and I believe is still there at some center instead of the theology dept; a lot of his most recent work has been in science and religion, esp. evolution, ecology etc. Great man.
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: Brahmins are not the wealthiest of castes in general. The landowning castes and business castes are in general more wealthy. Indian caste system is a complicated beast and varies a lot according to geography. I have not read Vishnu’s death. Have you read “The God of Small Things”. My friends from Kerala say that its depiction of Malayalees (inhabitants of Kerala, where the book is set) is quite accurate.
Brachiator
@Winston Smith:
Some scholars think that the caste system is older than Hinduism. Is there anything in the religion that specifies caste and lack of social mobility?
Perhaps just a noisy way of wondering why supposedly rational people are wallowing in the muddy waters of mythology and superstition.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: My tailor is Turkish too!
samara morgan
religion is not bad for humans…..pushing your religion on others is bad for humans.
and universalist religions like buddhism and al-Islam are good for all homo sap, while individualist dominionist religions are only good for the particular tribe.
salvation by faith alone is a fucking cop out.
only xians belief in that.
samara morgan
@Brachiator: one of my shayyks once told me that religion is who we want to be, while myth and legend are who we really are.
AA+ Bonds
Quite correct – ‘karma’ is a system of social oppression that has been swallowed whole by a lot of neurotic Americans lately
Citizen Alan
@Sly:
I must respectfully disagree. While I am dubious about God, Heaven and Hell, I do believe in the soul, whose existence is proven by its absence in far too many people, most of whom vote Republican.
AA+ Bonds
Another opiate that Americans enjoy consuming is the Dao De Jing, which can easily be read (as it was by Ronald Reagan) as instructions to shut up, lie down, and let the people in charge do their business quietly
The evidence here isn’t just Reagan but the Buddhist corpses that native Taoist priests stacked like cordwood when Buddhism first moved through Asia
AA+ Bonds
I have little goddamned patience for “the wisdom of the East”, which demonstrates the same material oppression as “the reason of the West”
Communities and traditions of class resistance in these religions are as exceptional as they are in Christianity, Judaism and Islam
debg
@Brachiator:
I’m not an expert on early Hinduism, but I’ve read up on it enough to teach my college world civ course. (Which isn’t much.)
The most recent stuff I’ve seen says that castes do come in with Hinduism; they don’t predate it. Look for research on Harappan/Indus Valley cultures, as these folks lived in the western Indus Valley before Aryans showed up from the Caspian Sea region.
The Vedas do say that castes can’t be changed. In fact, they say that changing any aspect of a Hindu ritual will negate that ritual. So though the Vedas were written over a long period of time, starting some time after the Aryans arrived in northwestern India, historians feel reasonably confident in using them.
There are also texts like the Laws of Manu that say “Don’t change the caste system!” Obviously, the system DID change, because the Untouchables and other subcastes emerged long after 1500 BCE.
I’ve not looked at the historical (not theological) scholarship in a few years, so there may be more recent stuff out there. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, too, as my reading has been limited. Historians have a really hard time with Indian history because the texts never talk about political stuff; it’s all religion. A simple chronology of really early events is almost impossible to create.
ruemara
@schrodinger’s cat: My use of the term was less about the wealth and more about the role of the Brahmin as the role model of goodness. I’ve read some of “God of Small Things” but not completed it, but it was much more tolerable.
Cmm
@Warren Terra: This. Which is why I can still practice Judaism as a spiritual practice even when I am having my periodic atheist swings.
The negative part of orthodoxy/ultra orthodoxy is that it seems to be that for some of them, being a good Jew (keeping the commandments about kosher and Shabbat and such) doesn’t necessarily preclude doing bad things to others, like the conditions for workers at Agriprocessors.
AA+ Bonds
Pretty much the only thing Eastern religions have going for them are longer (still recent) traditions of multiplicity of practice under a ruling class or caste, and as soon as any of those novel practices appear to pose a threat, they are treated the same way the Bons Hommes were treated in Languedoc
See the fascinating history of Christianity in Japan
Only humans can save humans
Winston Smith
@Brachiator:
That’s probably true. The insistence that the caste system is inseparable from and an inevitable consequence of Hinduism is a relatively modern invention. It’s much like a lot of what passes as Christianity these days is barely a quarter as old (or less) than the religion itself.
I guess. In my experience, people who noisily wonder why you’re doing something they wouldn’t do are reacting emotionally to something inside themselves and have no business talking about anyone else’s rationality.
I don’t have to explain my interest in religion any more than I need to explain my interest in “Skyrim: the Elder Scrolls.” If, however, someone joined a discussion of the latter with, “Why are you talking about Skyrim? It’s just a stupid game that serves to separate idiots from their money so they can waste hours doing something useless,” you’d have to wonder what’s wrong with them.
AA+ Bonds
@Cmm:
Hearing a bunch of rich-ass Orthodox business owners press a rabbi over ona’ah is a pretty depressing thing to hear . . . it’s like, exactly how evil can we be before the rabbi tells us it’s kefira
el donaldo
A number of commenters seem to have already nailed it, especially YoohooCthulhu, so I’ll just add that beliefs about karma aside, reincarnation is more of a cultural idea in South Asia and not specifically a religious tenet. Though the idea trailed Buddhist teachings as they moved through China into East Asia, it never really became widely accepted in those areas. And while Buddhism in South Asia has dealt with the notion of reincarnation, the Buddhist notion that there is no soul to be reincarnated has to be managed as well.
AA+ Bonds
@Winston Smith:
Oh yeah, like sending your gay kids to anti-gay camp, no one has any business questioning that shit on the basis of reason
“Wallowing” is a good way to describe any contemporary analysis of religion that isn’t critical analysis
Recall
@Winston Smith: I prefer this version:
India has atheists as well.
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: Role model of goodness. I don’t think anybody in their right mind believes that. One advantage that the Brahmins have had over the castes was access to education. Of course that was mostly not true if you were a Brahmin woman, though. Women had to be kept barefoot and pregnant and were supposed to walk behind their husbands.
ETA: Strictures against brahmin widows were the worst. Child marriage was common and when the husband died, the widow had to wear a muddy red colored sari, and her head would be shaved, she could not wear any jewelry. So that she would not
“tempt” other men.
AA+ Bonds
I remember when I was a youngster and all the leftists were talking about this any-day-now New Evangelical/fundamentalist social responsibility that was going to come out of the environmental stewardship movement
My response was: “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, but that dog’s never going to lie down with you anyway, so lucky you”
Ditto Buddhism
Ashwin
Your friend must be going to some shitty Diwali celebrations cause mine are always a blast.
wrb
@AA+ Bonds:
I used to sound just like this.
It sure is embarrassing to look back at that arrogant, ignorant self.
Too much faith, I had.
PurpleGirl
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: Go ahead and wear it if the weather is nice enough. I don’t know who made up those rules but I think they sank with the Titanic.
Brachiator
@debg:
Thanks very much for the info.
When I was travelling in India, one of the guides noted that his father was Hindu and his mother was Buddhist. One of the people in our group asked what religion he considered himself to be. When he said both, one of our group, objected. “You can’t be both!”
The guide just smiled and ceased trying to explain or justify.
@Winston Smith:
Good point. But why do people waste time talking about Skyrim?
I can understand an interest in religion, or most any other topic. But professions of belief by otherwise sane people are kinda sad.
c u n d gulag
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I can’t argue the point, since I took a college class on this over 35 years ago, and, as I said, am an admitted Agnostic and imbecile, so learning any of this was more of a way to meet women.
So, I defer to what you said, since I can’t remember any more of that time period, because I was too busy enjoying the bounties of Mother Earth in her many different forms – NOT that I EVER inhaled or swallowed!
And I NEVER touched even one of her beautiful, lithesome, daughters or nieces!
I SWEAR!
*CRACK* of lightning!
WereBear
It is surfacely easy to look at someone like Dick (the) Cheney and not believe in any kind of justice in the world.
But if we value the most important elements of life; Cheney has none of that. His human relations are based on fear and intimidation. He has no real friends. His relatives exist for him to feel better about himself; it’s okay that his daughter is gay, but everyone else can be beaten to death for all he cares.
It is a miserable, misbegotten, existence and no amount of money does anything but distract him from it. In fact, that is why such people are driven to acccumulate money, take drugs, and struggle to dissolve themselves in overdoses of sensations and consumption.
All men are mortal. If religion does nothing else, it is giving Cheney some sleepless nights.
Sly
@PurpleGirl:
And even if they are still alive, are they the sort whose judgement you really want to use as the basis of legitimization for how you act? Clothing taboos have not, as a general rule, been the hallmark of a socially emancipated people.
Tony J
@Brachiator:
It’s Indo-European in heritage. The people who rolled out of the areas north of the Black Sea about 4000 BCE and brought their warrior/priest/serf culture with them from the Atlantic to the edge of China. In India in seems to have mixed with the native mythology to produce something thematically different but still true to its old roots.
beergoggles
Xtian mythology initially had it’s reincarnation supporters – just Google Origen. In any of these mythologies, the current incarnation is a matter of natural selection and evolution among its believers.
schrodinger's cat
@Sly: True, but wearing wildly unseasonal stuff is just uncomfortable, for example, shorts in December, or a parka in summer. I think the rules have some practical basis and then become codified into dogma.
I don’t know about you, but wearing autumn colors during fall, and pastels in spring just seems right, matches my mood and the weather outside. I think clothes are personal, one should what makes one feel the best, and happy. Clothes are for us and not vice-versa.
becca
So this protestant guy is converting to judaism so he can marry his jewish sweetie.
The rabbi tells him circumcision is part of the deal and the young man is understandably concerned.
“Does it hurt a lot?” he asks the rabbi.
“I was only 8 days old at the time, but I couldn’t walk for a year!” sez the rabbi.
Ha!
AA+ Bonds
@wrb:
^the laziest ever
I’ll let you know when the Buddha comes out of my TV and tells me to oppose abortion or whatever, okay
Until then, my rule of thumb is that if an analysis of religion doesn’t seem like “overreaching” to practitioners, it’s inauthentic at best and disingenuous at worst
jrg
This thread is amusing. Lovin’ the “atheists argue religion because they can’t cope with arglebargle blah blah” bits. Cause, you know, there’s no reason to argue.
Now, hold still while I erase your marriage, make medical decisions for your brain-dead wife, cram this wand in your vagina, and send your kids off to go get Gog and Magog over in the middle east.
Julia Grey
These days, even down here in traditional Chah-leston we let the weather tell us when it’s time to wear summer weight.
Although I don’t think I’ve ever seen a seersucker suit before June.
samara morgan
universalism.
prana, vedanta, whadat al wujud, whatever you want to call it.
something entirely absent from the exclusionism of christianity, and the crude cartoonish christian concept of heaven and hell.
My First Shayyk, the Muhiyyadin.
the garden amid the flames and the polished mirror.
samara morgan
@Amir Khalid: IPOF salvation by faith alone is incompatible with salat and dikhr, the idea of just duty, and the pillars of Islam. Muslims, as I’m sure you know, do not believe in the concept of original sin….we believe mankind is forgetful, and can be redeemed to remembrance through prayer and just duty.
That is why we say all children are born muslim….because they are born innocent.
Original sin evolved as a reason for jesus’s death on the cross long after his death.
the whole “he died for our sins”.
One of my friends is a “born-again”. She says she is just as sinful as jeffrey dahmer!
she believes she is so full of sin that no amount of works can make a dent in it, and therefore she must have salvation by faith as well.
Schlemizel
Religion is like a coccyx. I’m sure it served some purpose at some point for our ancestors, now it just causes a pain in the ass.
Winston Smith
@AA+ Bonds:
Ah. And I see some lucky kids got to go to strawman camp.
Winston Smith
@Brachiator:
I see what you mean; it’s not possible that there’s a lack of understanding on your part as to what they believe in.
jwalden91lx
@Cassidy:
Well played, madam. Well played.
catclub
“excruciating Diwali festivities”
hmmm
priscianusjr
@Winston Smith:
THE
@DougJ:
I would not agree that Karma is the central idea of Eastern religion. Because in parallel to that, there is the deep sense that the world is illusion (Maya or Avidya).
In other words, while there is this world of cause and effect–of pain and pleasure, of reward and punishment, there is also the path of awakening from the dream, the dance, the wheel, i.e. Samsara — to the quiet repose, where all dualities start to fall apart. Call it Enlightenment, call it liberation (moksha).
So I would say that the central vision of Eastern religion is that behind the apparent reality of form, is the deeper reality of Tat Tvam Asi.
I would also say, that the major difference between the different sects/schools of Eastern religion, lies in the details of how they conceptualize a path, of escaping from this reality to that one.
So I would say that Tat Tvam Asi (Thou art That) is for me, the central point of difference between the so called Dharmic religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, vs. the Western, Abrahamic religions. In Western religions God is always not-me. He may be judge, lawgiver, creator, lover, but he is always other. There is always a distance between the creator and the created.
Not necessarily so in Dharmic traditions. There, either there is no ultimate separation, or the self is illusion all the way to its final point of annihilation.
samara morgan
@Schlemizel:
pants on fire false. homo sapiens sapiens has not evolved past religion.
Like political affiliation, there is a biological basis for religious belief.
Again, religion is good for homo sap. Pushing one’s religion on others (proselytizing) is the cause of evil.
samara morgan
@THE: do you know what i find amusing? the pretzel-logic shapes christians assume in trying to justify the crusades.
the arguments are isomorphic with the justification for the Freedom Agenda and OIF/OEF centuries later.
THE
@samara morgan:
What do you mean justify?
Islam was expanding for centuries over Christian territories before Christians finally resisted and started pushing back.
Almost the entirety of MENA was Christian once.
The Copts, Armenians, Syriac Christians, etc, are relicts of the Pre-Islamic populations.
These Churches are among the oldest forms of Christianity known.
samara morgan
@THE: wallah.
see wut i mean? you are doing it right now.
the push to conquer jerusalem was just medieval COIN, lol.
Islam conquered via evo theory of culture….it evolved to supplant xianity in situ.
;)
THE
I don’t see how you can justify Islamic aggression and military conquests, but not Christian reactions of the same type and centuries later.
But I am not justifying Christian anything. I am only questioning your inconsistency and hypocrisy.
FWIW I don’t believe ether Islam or Christianity will still be major religions by the end of this century.
THE
@THE: Whoops that link to the animated map didn’t work. This is the correct link.
wrb
Samara said
The said
The:
Your comment is very well put.
I’ll quibble though with the absoluteness of both your and Samara’s comment.
There have been Christian religions in which god is not other and heaven and hell is not cartoonish.
This is true “inner light” faiths such as New Light Quakerism. (the old light being the gospels, the inner light being an interior window).
This was a key realization of Emerson’s: that the Quakers, Kant, Swedenbourg, Goethe, and eastern religions were talking about the same thing.
THE
@wrb:
I take your point wrb. Undoubtedly there have been minor versions of Christianity for which that has been true. Perhaps even the Gnostics.
John M. Burt
The closest I have ever come to religiosity was when I was turning over in my head the name “Religious Society of the Friends of Christ”, and thought to myself, I sure don’t want to be an enemy of Christ, one of those who abused and murdered an innocent man. So if the name of Jesus Christ means anything, I want to be counted as a friend of Christ.
Not much, but I did burst into tears after I said it, which was pretty inconvenient since I was driving at the time.
samara morgan
@THE: you constantly equivocate christianity and islam. that was WEC retard Bush’s grave mistake, and why the crusades also failed. you cannot beat memetic evolution with force of arms.
Islam is the next evolutionary stage of abramaic religion– it evolved FROM christianity and judaism, and thus is evolutionarily superior. fitness strat vs. counter-strat.
yes, wrb is correct about that….evolutionary dead ends like gnosticism and quakerism.
in the age of SNT and globalization what religions will succeed, evolutionarily?
i think inclusivist religions like buddhism and islam. because they require less suspension of disbelief, and less entry social capital.
And aren’t all humans really equal? Aren’t we ALL in the same tribe?
atheism OTOH requires a huge investment to pass the bar: education, IQ, age.
samara morgan
@wrb:
and how many adherents do those religions have today?
like i said, dead end branches on the tree of memetic evolution.
samara morgan
@THE: consider this–
the evolutionary fitness counter-strat is defense against proselytization.
Proselytization was xianity’s killer app which evolved as a counter strategy to jewish birthright membership. Both judaism and xianity are exclusivist.
Then when Islam evolved from xianity, defense against proselytization and inclusivism became Islams killer apps.
this should be obvious to anyone with the most basic education in evo theory of culture and evo theory of games.
samara morgan
Attencione, juicers.
DougJ doesn’t really want to know the difference between eastern religions and western religions.
he wants someone like THE or wrb to tell him all religions are the same.
what are western religions anyways? they are some variant of christianity.
THE
So by that logic LDS is even more recent and more highly evolved. Also the Sikhs, or the Bahais?
Actually what you are saying is crap because religions don’t stop adapting until they get overwhelmed by change and disappear.
So Christianity has continued to evolve from Catholicism into the Protestant reformation. And now megachurches, Charismatics etc, etc. Every year new forms emerge but there is also attrition.
And still the fastest-growing category of religion is “no relgion” if you only count conversion.
Also your misunderstanding of evolution for religion is bullshit. There is no such thing as superior or inferior in evolution. Certainly biological evolution is not a teleonomic process. You are shockingly ignorant of evolutionary theory if you think so.
THE
Edit: Double post
THE
Even if I concede that you may be right about that. What could possibly go wrong with a religion that is deeply resistant to foreign ideas?
Don’t you see the obvious danger here? The Islamic world is not threatened today by Christianity as such. It is threatened by modernity and secularism. Which incidentally is eliminating Christianity in large parts of the modern world too.
The truth is no traditional religion is really doing well against secularism. They either resist change and become stagnant intellectual backwaters, or they admit change and get co-opted by raging secularization.
My money is on Buddhism, or Tao or outright pagan folk religion, like Japan, precisely because these nature-centric systems get on alright with secularism in practice. They can be poeticized-romanticized-psycholigized. New age-ified. Whatever, watered down for a generation that basically gets its reality and spirituality from video games and has a two minute attention span.
THE
And I ask you Samara: Someone who is as familiar with Anime as you.
How can you not see how traditional Kami-worshiping Shinto is beautifully compatible with mystical-themed computer games and video entertainment?
You introduced me to Miyazaki Samara.
Spirited Away is full of freakin’ Kami!!!!
THE
Even in the Western tradition, what succeeds is traditional pagan-heroic mythology.
So Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars (deliberately referencing Joseph Campbells mythography), or Vampires or thousands of mythical – but not really hardcore religious – themes.
So you get Bollywood Samara. And its incredible richness of myths and legends.
Does any Muslim movie have that kind of cross-cultural blockbuster success that you can think of?
Any video game, Samara?
Aardvark Cheeselog
I’d like to second some points made someplace above, about not conflating Buddhism and Hinduism just because they both use the word “karma.” Likewise with the notion of reincarnation as being not central to Buddhism. In particular, one of the earlier canonical scriptures of Buddhism explicitly rejects having any position on whether or not the world is eternal, whether or not the world is finite, whether the self and the body are the same or not, and whether the self survives death or not.
Of course with Buddhism as with every other religion, there is the belief of the common people as opposed to the doctrines of the sophisticated. Buddhism does have a belief in a notion of “merit,” which some flavors of Buddhism believe in as a sort of counter to karma. I have a notion, not supported by any good evidence, that Tibetan Buddhism (in its various forms) places more emphasis on merit than other Mahayana traditions like Zen.
THE
@Aardvark Cheeselog: Good points Aardvark. I was thinking of the Pali canon, when I tried to play down reincarnation. I didn’t intend to conflate Hinduism and Buddhism, so much as pick out some related elements because I was trying to paint with the broadest possible brush.
I believe it is perfectly possible to come up with a non-supernatural Buddhism – based on its metaphysical, moral and psychological insights alone. Just like there are secular forms of Tao. That’s why they both seem unassailable to me.
And pure mythology will always have a place in the scheme of things as long as there is 3D and IMAX and immersive displays.
Legalistic religions may depend on piles of dusty old books, but myths and magic come to life on screens.
samara morgan
@THE: so touchy.
LDS is a dead end branch of xianity.
Have you read Maynard Smiths Evolution and the Theory of Games?
its all about the maffs.
I understand evolutionary superiority very well, tyvm.
Just like the selfish genes, the selfish memes display reproductive fitness as number of reps.
And you won’t like my review of Mooney’s book, THE.
Because i am beginning to suspect you have a republican brain.
samara morgan
@THE: one of my shayyks once said, religion is who we want to be….and myth and legend is who we really are.
THE
@samara morgan: You are way more conservative than me Samara. I am not the one clinging to thousand year old superstitions.
samara morgan
@THE: here spock, consider this with whats left of your rational lobe.
Sully goes jesus-freak.
Sadly, as Sullivan’s health deteriorates, he is going to become more focused on catholicism and jeebus.
its the republican brain in action.
samara morgan
@THE: the Arabian Nights has great material, but MENA hasn’t had a movie industry. that time will come.
consider this…
its pretty simple really….America is in decline, and dar ul Islam is on the rise.
look at the most important criteria. Population aging.
;)
samara morgan
@THE: lolwut? Mooney defines the conservative brain as rejecting logic and reason. I’m the one citing Maynard Smith and the mathematics of evolution.
THE
@samara morgan:
Sadly, it might be fear of death in action. I hope medical science can continue to help him.
THE
@samara morgan:
Untrue Samara. USA is fine.
It is just going through a soft patch everyone who was following the PeakOil story knew was going to come.
It is a decade of adjustment that is all. You will power out of this faster than ever in a decade or so, once the energy prices start to drop ever-lower.
It’s not that dissimilar to what happened in the last energy crisis in the 1970’s really. Just a bit more severe, because it’s the real thing this time. Last time was only USA Peak Oil.
samara morgan
@THE: as an evolutionary biologist and Maynard Smith otaku, i have to say the highest correlate with ascendent nations prosperity is what proportion of the population is under 30.
Every country in MENA beats the USA.
and sure, if we can discover an alternative energy source to replace cheap oil before America goes full frontal fascist, that would be great.
but while i do believe in wahdat al wujud and wahdat al shuhud, i do not believe in unicorn farts.
THE
@samara morgan:
Do you have a log on account for WordPress?
THE
If that were true, the fastest growing economies would be in Sub-Saharan Africa.
THE
Unicorn farts are much more plausible than the other two.
After all, unicorns might have evolved on other planets in the Galaxy.
THE
My judgement is being influenced by this science story.
THE
@samara morgan:
I am agnostic on the subject of America’s political system.
I do not know if democracy is indefinitely sustainable.
samara morgan
@THE: no sillie man.
hawking and tyson believe in connectedness.
and so do i.
al Islam is not hard to understand…..what is good for your neighbor is good for you, and vice versa.
but some of your neighbors have republican brains…roughly half of them i would guess.
therefore they need authoritarian guidance on alignment.
;)
how about a sci-fi novel where conservatism is a brain disease and the enlightenment cure is biomemes right out of Parasite Rex?
samara morgan
@THE: wahdat al wujud is unity of being, i.e. globalization. wahdat al shuhud is unity of consciousness, i.e. the world wide web.
obvi.
;)
samara morgan
@THE: Sully does not care for the Republican Brain.
isn’t the Republican Brain to conservatives just what Murray’s Bell Curve was to blacks?
LOL!
THE
@samara morgan: @samara morgan:
All right Samara. If you want to rationalize those ideas. But I think that maybe their inventors would disagree with you if you could ask them. They had something rather different in mind, methinks.
It’s a bit like people reinterpreting the creation myths in Genesis as somehow referring to the Big Bang. Yeah sure you can do that.
But I have to ask: If science is your ultimate authority for the right way to interpret religion, then why not skip the religion and get your science direct from the source — Mother Nature?
And what does the religion actually add then, except layers of confusion and indirection?
In the end I choose — the purity of science — straight, undiluted. Scary as hell, if you have the courage to actually believe it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I am on this trip to the end. That was my choice.
THE
@samara morgan:
I can see why you are saying that, and if you feel that (I haven’t read Mooney’s book and I don’t think I will) then perhaps that is a critique more than an endorsement.
I follow genomics rather closely at my website. As well as computer modelling of genes and brains. My sense is that the distance we have yet to travel, is a lot further than we have come so far.
So it think it is still time to reserve your real judgment. We are still orders of magnitude from deep knowledge.
But it is coming and it will come.
THE
I’ll buy that religion is a brain disease. LOL.
Actually probably neither of them are. They are both adaptations.
My take on the conservative-progressive thing is this:
If they are genetically determined. Then the fact that there is a bimodal distribution, suggests to me that there must be two distinct sub-environments and both occur with sufficient frequency that both adaptations are favored.
In other words there are some situations where conservative strategies work best and there are some situations where progressive strategies work best. That is why two different sub-populations can fill the same space without one wiping the other one out.
THE
And this is the best comment I’ve read about memes.
samara morgan
@THE:
Mooney points that out in his book.
but conservative substrate is losing ground as memetic fitness for a variety of reasons.
the most important one is race. because even dark-skinned humans with strong conservative tendency will not vote republican anymore. Memetic fitness selection has resulted in a party almost entirely made up of older white christians.
Demographics is destiny, and liberalism is not the enemy of conservativism–evolution is.
can’t stop evolution.
;)
samara morgan
@THE:
what religion adds is representation.
not everyone can hack their own brains….you need Openess, IQ and education.
like we usta say in AI 101, representation is All.
samara morgan
@THE:
i think you have to say, determined by inheritance–all the four parts; genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic.
Mooney agrees the science is not settled– but his thesis gives the best explanation i have seen so far for the empirical data– why 2/3s of conservatives think Obama is a muslim, why 96% of scientists are not republican, etc.
isn’t that what science is? the hypoth that carries the day is the one that best explains the empirical data.
samara morgan
@THE: lol! interestingly E.O. Wilson wanted to call them culture genes and the original was mimeme from the greek.
so meme is itself a memetic evolution of relative reproductive fitness or possibly a mutated version of mimeme.
THE
@samara morgan:
As far as I can judge at this distance, I think you are right. But. I still think at some point the emergence of a Hispanic (Catholic?) conservatism is inevitable.
Remember nothing can stop the rise of the Hispanics in USA, because you aren’t going a whole lot more immigration from Europe on account of the demographic decline of Europe, and the age profile. Old people don’t emigrate much unless it’s family reunion. Asians are going to stay in (or even return to) booming Asia, so you have Hispanic Americans.
In many ways I see the GOP’s current obsession with “Catholic” issues like contraception and abortion as the GOP getting itself ready for the inevitable Catholicization and Hispanicisation of Conservatism.
I suspect they know it is going to happen, and they are gradually moving the base. I don’t agree with most BJers that it is an error cos its alienating the Feminists. I think it is strategic and long-term. It is the shape of future US conservatism.
I suspect the elite would go faster if they could but they fear losing the current base.
THE
Yes. But today there are religions and religions and religions. 3 types.
I can live with two of them.